Friday, September 7, 2012

WHY ORGANISATIONS SHOULD SPONSOR SPOKEN WORD POETRY EVENTS IN NIGERIA

We are very passionate about Performance Poetry and Spoken Word as a genre of entertainment, tool to increase literacy level, and as a means of communication, education and information.

We would like to point out how Performance Poetry and Spoken Word would fit into an organisation's CSR and the list of events to sponsor, and this is as follows:

1. The dream is to create a Performance Poetry and Spoken Word industry (just like the Comedy industry in Nigeria) where people can earn a decent living as Perfromance Poets.

2. We have so many talented youths in our Nation, unfortunately, we have more unemployed youths than the employed and like the saying goes, "the idle mind is the devil's workshop." Thus, having a "Performance Poetry and Spoken Word" show would give them something to focus their time and energy on and in a way provide employment for them as awareness and sponsorship of the art form increases.

3. The more the increased awarenes of the art form, the more the attraction towards it, especially among the youths, children and the young at heart. And in order to be a very good poet, you need to be well read and also be a good writer. Thus, this art form can help improve literacy level in Universities and Secondary Schools, and generally amongst the populace.

4. For your organisation sponsoring "Performance Poetry and Spoken Word" shows will increase the brand awareness as a youthful brand and also enable the organisation to capture as customer, youths who are art inclined. For as the awareness of the organisation's brand grows, the more products and services that are aligned towards this art form can be developed to further increase the bottom line of the organisation.

5. Being different, is uniqueness itself. Thus, while every other corporate organisations are going after the actors, musicians and the likes as brand ambassadors. The organisation can choose to use poets as its own brand ambassadors, and poems (both written and performed) can be done in respect of the organisation and further increase the brand.

I hope with the few points above, you can see the immense potential inherent Performance Poetry and Spoken Word as an art form, CSR activity, employment opportunity, education and literacy tool, Brand awareness, product and services development, and profit generating mechanism.